Sonoma family's 9/11 observance stirs controversy
Published: Friday, September 18, 2009 at 6:18 p.m.
Last Modified: Friday, September 18, 2009 at 6:18 p.m.
The Martin family of Sonoma finds itself pulled in two directions.
With two sons in local middle and high schools, they’re eager to support school officials’ efforts to establish rules and keep students safe.
But they’re unrelentingly displeased with a decision last week saying their middle-school son’s bid to honor the fallen firefighters of 9/11 by wearing a Vallejo Fire Department T-shirt ran afoul of the school’s dress code prohibiting gang colors. The boy was sent home when he would not change the shirt.
Continuing news coverage of the episode and “a lot of mixed response” from the community has forced them to try to maintain a thick skin, said Karin Martin, the boy’s mother.
But Martin and her husband, 14-year Vallejo firefighter Dennis Martin, aren’t backing down from their support of son Dean, a seventh-grader at Adele Harrison Middle School.
They dispute that the navy blue shirt with large red and white lettering on the back and a white insignia on the front constitutes the kind of “solid blue” shirt prohibited by school rules.
Dennis Martin also said the dress code should be enforced with some discretion, taking into account the sensitivities of the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks
“We have the utmost respect for the schools and the school district,” he said. “They have a hard job. But our son believed in this, and we backed him.”
Adele Harrison Principal Karla Conroy said the school was just enforcing the dress code as effectively and fairly as possible.
Rules regarding colors and symbols traditionally affiliated with gangs are designed not only to forestall violence but any intimidation students might feel, she said.
Periodically, someone forgets and is sent to the office to change into one of the extra T-shirts Conroy buys and keeps on hand for such occasions.
Even with the lettering, anyone looking at Dean’s fire shirt would recognize it as a blue T-shirt, Conroy said.
“Do we ask one kid not to wear red and blue but another kid can?” she asked.
Conroy also said the policy was new last fall when Sept. 11, 2008 rolled around, and officials decided to make exceptions on red and blue shirts so students could pay tribute.
But some students abused the opportunity at two other Sonoma Valley Unified schools where school personnel observed what they believed was gang-related posturing, Conroy said.
So no exceptions were made this year, and though four Adele Harrison students turned up in blue, “three of them said, ‘Oh, I just forgot,’ and they changed the shirt,” Conroy said.
Dean Martin, meanwhile, says the whole thing is just disappointing and sad.
“It was kind of mean, because it was a fire shirt and I was honoring the fallen firefighters,” he said.
The 11-year-old may have firefighting in his blood.
His father, maternal grandfather and uncle are all firefighters, as was his paternal grandfather, now deceased.
His brother, Drake, 16, is a firefighter Explorer with the Schell-Vista Fire Department.
Dean says he wants to be a firefighter, too.
He attended St. Francis Solano School for most of grade school, each year attending Sept. 11 memorial services at which his father twice was guest speaker.
On Sept. 11, before school, he and his mother watched what they could of a televised memorial service honoring those who perished that day. After taking a shower, Dean Martin told his mother he was going to wear his dad’s Vallejo Fire T-shirt to school as a tribute, and she assented without thinking of the dress code.
But when Dean Martin got to school, he was quickly pulled aside and told he needed to wear something else. He was offered one of the extra shirts or even his gym shirt, Conroy said.
But the boy refused and his mother suggested he ride his bike home, then told him he could stay home for the day.
“It made me sad that Dean was just trying to do something nice that day for remembering 9/11 and for firemen and everyone who was lost, and he had to come home because he couldn’t do it anymore,” she says now. “It just didn’t feel right to me. It seems like someone took away someone’s right.
“But rules are rules, and we have to abide by them, so he came home,” Karin Martin said.
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